July 16, 2020
Thanks to the research of an Ursuline College graduate student, downtown Painesville, Ohio, has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Tara Carlson, who earned her master’s degree in Historic Preservation at Ursuline earlier this year, made the Painesville project the focus of her master’s thesis.
"This has been a work in progress for about four years. Having this final approval is very satisfying after all of our hard work as well as very exciting for the City of Painesville," she said in a new release posted by the City of Painesville.
“I am very proud of Tara’s efforts and delighted with the result,” said Bari Oyler Stith, PhD, chair of Ursuline’s Historic Preservation Department. “This makes at least eight National Register designations attributable to Ursuline grad students in the last 10 years. Collectively, these designations represent an impressive legacy of preserving, appreciating and learning from the past.”
Carlson wrote the initial application for state preservation funds after taking a grant writing class at Ursuline. Those grant monies helped pay for the research and writing of the extensive and successful National Register nomination to the National Park Service.
She led a committee of six local planners and historians who contributed to research and planning for the Park Service application, which she first drafted for an Ursuline survey and nomination course. The final application reviewed more than 47 structures that are over 50 years old as well as a local park.
"The application process is very technical," said Carlson. "Certain terminology needed to be used, certain criteria met, specific applications used. After all the research and writing was done, the application went through three reviews at the state level and one at the national level."
The final historic district includes 25.11 acres in the downtown, 49 resources, 40 contributing buildings, one contributing park and one contributing monument. For more information including images of the downtown, see the City of Painesville’s announcement.
The photo above was taken at the December 2019 meeting of the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board in Columbus. From left, Tara Carlson, MA ’20; Ursuline grad Mary Rody, MA ’11, Architecture Transportation Reviews, Manager, Ohio Historic Preservation Office; Barbara Powers, Department Head, Inventory and Registration, Ohio Historic Preservation Office; Ursuline grad Rachel Stucke, MA ’18, Historic Preservation Specialist, LDA Architects; Amanda Terrell, Director, Ohio Historic Preservation Office. The day this was taken, OHSPAB heard nominations from Carlson for Painesville as well as from Stucke for Castle Block in Ashtabula and Henry W. Longfellow School in Cleveland. OHSPAB board members approved all three nominations to be sent on to the National Park Service/U.S. Department of the Interior for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
